Smallest fan keeps fighting

Jenna Waters knows more than a 4-year-old should about the Iowa football team. Of course, she's friends with several Hawkeyes, most notably Ricky Stanzi.

She also knows more than a 4-year-old should about hospital procedures. Eleven months ago, Jenna Waters was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer known as embraynol hepatoblastoma.

Last spring, the young girl from Ainsworth was visited by Stanzi and teammates A.J. Edds, Tony Moeaki, Jeff Tarpinian and Brett Morse in her room at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. While Stanzi has been a good friend to Jenna during her fight, the junior quarterback has received just as much inspiration from this brave little girl.

“She's probably our favorite fan,” Stanzi said. “We love the support she has for us and how much she looks up to the team.”

The players also look up to her, wondering how someone so small finds the strength to fight a serious illness.

“She is very feisty. She has a lot of attitude,” said Christina Waters, Jenna's mother.

Even cancer can't keep Jenna from having fun with her older brother, Bryce, and twin sister Katelyn.

“If she had hair, you wouldn't know she was sick,” said Jared Waters, Jenna's father. “When they drew a picture and said this is what her liver looks like, it was quite shocking.”

The Waters knew their daughter would have to fight for her life.

“We know what Stage IV cancer means. I didn't ask for a prognosis,” Christina said. “She was weighing 16 pounds at just four years old. She was just skin and bones.”

Family and friends always are in and out of Jenna's hospital room, but none of her visitors compare to a few strangers she met last spring.

“That was the first time she smiled all day, when those five walked into the room,” Christina said. “Ever since then, she's had a love for them.”

That's when Hawkeye football became just as important as princesses and the color pink to Jenna. Many hospital visits later, Jenna still has her favorite football team close by her side. She's never without her Hawkeye pillowcase or autographed Iowa football.

Jenna keeps in touch with the players, who are preparing for an Orange Bowl date with Georgia Tech, but she has a particular fondness for Iowa's starting quarterback.

“She likes her Ricky, that's for sure,” Christina said. “He is more than a football player and we are more than fans. He's been kind of part of our family.”

The feeling is mutual. Stanzi talks with Jenna and her family almost daily, and he gets a text picture of Jenna in her Hawkeye gear before every game. He also proudly wears three of Jenna's pink bracelets, which were made by her mother and read “Pray for Princess Jenna.”

“He likes to wear his pink bracelets; it brings him pink power,” Christina said.

Jenna now wears a Batman shirt because she says Stanzi likes Batman.

“We can learn from a girl who is only four years old because of the things she does in her own life, the way she puts up a fight,” said Stanzi, who had to fight through a high ankle sprain that knocked him out of the Northwestern game in the second quarter and the final two games of the regular season.

Jenna has fought through 13 rounds of chemotherapy, a few surgeries and a liver transplant. She still has to have a few more tests and a CT scan before doctors officially can say she is in remission. The Waters family hopes that happens by Jan. 16 - the one-year anniversary of the initial diagnosis.

“That is how she has fought and won,” Christina said. “She has this feisty attitude that she is never going to give up.”